TriMet

[January 4th, 2006] Happy New Year 1984!

This first Rogue of 2006 proudly presents TriMet and its double-speak dictionary worthy of George Orwell:

TriMet officials said they offered "extra" New Year's Eve service this year. The Rogue translation: There wasn't as much service as last New Year's Eve, and the free rides started two hours later, at 8 pm instead of last year's 6 pm.

TriMet said it tried to "have our service reflect ridership patterns," and that there would be less need for late-night service downtown because there was no New Year's Eve concert in Pioneer Courthouse Square this year. Rogue translation: Other New Year's Eve revelers looking to do the right thing by not driving—and depending on TriMet—got screwed.

"It would be my guess that there would be people out drinking in bars," said lawyer Kati Dunn-Elkins, who took the MAX Yellow Line home last year. "It should be important to them to keep drunk drivers off the road."

While MAX Blue Line service to Gresham and Hillsboro was scheduled to run until 3 am, buses and the Yellow Line were on normal Saturday schedules. That meant the last chance for those other riders to get home from downtown was between 12:30 and 1:30 am—instead of 2:30 to 3 am, when the MAX lines and 10 bus routes ran last New Year's Eve.

TriMet spokesman Bruce Solberg said "the last couple hours of our extended bus service were just a rider or two riders or sometimes no riders at all" last year, while MAX "had sustained ridership throughout the night."

TriMet officials said Thursday they'd had a "handful of calls from people who had questions, but no complaints," but Rogue smelled more double-speak.

Dunn-Elkins said she called just the day before and was quite precise with her phrasing of the call as "a complaint." "I asked if they had had other complaints,'' she said. "And the woman told me, 'You're not the first.'"

By Tuesday morning, Solberg said TriMet had received three complaints and two compliments.